In the insurance industry, underwriters determine carrier exposure levels and insurance cost estimates based on where clients are located and their surrounding environment. It is particularly important to determine if a building occupied by a potential client has other tenants and if so, the underwriter must ascertain the business activities of these tenants to address potential liability ro exposure. Typically, an agent of the underwriter visually inspects each particular site to obtain the necessary information. A drawback of this method is that it is very inefficient and time consuming. Further disadvantages of this approach are that the information obtained may be inaccurate and incomplete.
Mapping applications provide the underwriters an alternative means for obtaining some of the information. However, mapping applications have a number of drawbacks. Mapping applications are typically used for geographically locating and identifying specified places or areas. However, the usefulness of these mapping applications is limited by their inability to easily identify all of the businesses located at a particular common site. A different business may be located depending upon the mapping application used for the query. A potentially insurable client, therefore, may have different identified tenants as a result of using different mapping applications. Inconsistent results affect risk exposure, insurance coverage and insurance premium costs for the client. Moreover, the fact that different occupants of the same building may utilize different addresses adds to this inconsistency.
In addition to being inefficient, inaccurate and inconsistent, a further drawback of the prior art methods is an inability to easily provide updated information reflecting changes in the occupancy of the building. For example, a chemical research company may initially have been a tenant in a potential client's building. Some time later, a convenience store may have replaced the chemical research company. The difference between the two businesses in terms of, for example, hazardous wastes and fire potential, greatly affects the insurance carrier's exposure level and in turn, the client's insurance premiums. Accurate and updated information would require the underwriter to inspect the site on a regular basis. The timeliness of the inspections would unduly affect the carrier's exposure and the client's costs. Accordingly, there is a need to provide a system and method that consistently provides accurate and updated building occupancy information for a selected site.